Catalina Island – Avalon 50 Mile Run January 14, 2006
Five years back I ran a 100 kilometer event here in Catalina. Now, twenty-
four ultra marathons and nine marathons later, I’m standing in morning
darkness with 135 other runners, keen to begin the 2006 Avalon 50-miler.
Millions of stars and the full yellow moon followed me across the country.
People travel three thousand miles, they’re still in the same place. Some
ultras are called “Self Transcendence” events. Revelation comes with ego
loss, a gateway to feeling one with the total energy of the universe. Long
distance running invites one to lose oneself, to lose the drape of mortality,
to quiet monkey brain, to live in the spaces between the noise.
That’s why I’m here.
When I started running beyond marathon distance, I was still a pusher. We
learn to push before we understand. First in line, first in class, first to
finish. I will win. Me. Push. Pushers have resistance in front of them.
Acquisitive, pushers can never get enough. It’s a Sisyphean slog, directed by
the past, destined to repeat it.
Or you can learn to be a puller. Instinctively we know this is good. That’s
why people say: “We’re pulling for you.” There’s hope. Pullers put resistance
behind them. Gravity helps pullers. Running, you lean forward, gravity pulls
you, the foot strike carries momentum. Form is economy of motion, to
effortlessness. Form becomes emptiness. We are here, not there. The past is
in our wake, it does not drive us. Pullers are inquisitive, satisfied by the
air they breathe. Emptiness is the form of transcendence.
The mayor gives a one-minute speech no one listens to. A raven’s territorial
“quork” startles me. We move with a signal to begin. Flashlights sweep the
ground. Within ten seconds, a runner, head down to see, dead flushes a
signpost, put suddenly on his back.
I’ve chosen beautiful venues to run ultra’s – Vermont woods, Mt. Hood forest,
Canada wilderness, Catalina. In trail running, look up and you’ll trip on a
rock or root and fall. I’ve missed the beauty of these places, looking down.
Then again, looking down there’s the hurting signpost, the fallen tree five
feet above the trail that clotheslined a welt on me last summer in the
Adirondack wilderness. It’s a contact sport if you can’t find a way to slip
into the beauty untouched. Observe, respect, move.
Ultrarunning’s irony is that fitness obsession is narcissistic, yet
ultrarunning offers deletion of the preoccupied self, to a selfless presence
in unbound consciousness.
Accomplishing fifty miles in one bite, or a hundred miles if you like,
requires months and years of practicing the long run. The long run takes you
through the wall so many times the wall disappears. You learn hydration,
electrolytes, food, and body care make a running checklist. Often there’s a
soft patch in the 35 – 45 mile range where your body tries to tell you
“Enough” and your mind will tell it “Not so”. This is the point of departure.
Knowing it’s there, the seasoned ultrarunner comes back to find it again and
again.
Awareness of breath cycles offers easiest access to this spirituality.
The four-step cycle is for steady going, three-step cycle is up tempo, two-
step cycle for maximum effort. You become absorbed in the tempo of breath
cycles, displacing signals of discomfort from the body. Pain is good, it
tends to dissolve artificial limits. Extreme pain is extremely good. Felt
many times extreme pain becomes ordinary, to a point there is no pain at all.
Then you step for a while beyond mortality.
Brother Cormac, my high school Latin teacher, explained the etymology of
“egregious” – above the herd. Ultrarunning is egregious.
We run in the dark for two hours. This event has 6500 feet of vertical, a lot
of it in the first seven miles. Fast walking up a slope I face the low full
yellow moon, my friend. I could be a root vegetable, right here.
Ravens have observed this annual migration of the curious running people for
twenty-five years. Moving across the high hogback of Catalina I see a pair of
them not ten feet away, one the sentinel, one reclining in a rock. I have
never seen a rock so comfortable. They sit smug in raven brain that we
excursionists cannot fly, that we will soon disappear for another twelve
months: “Clumsy pointless earthbound creatures, we pre-exist them.”
Seven hours later, I have moved through the point of departure, somewhere in
the forties, slow jog, breath cycling up a gradual slope. I am not tired, I
am beyond tired, I am soaring, lifted in thermal energy, just here, like the
raven gliding. This is the presence.
And it stays with you after you’ve finished, more and more with every long
run.
From mile 34 to mile 47 Catalina gives you its long uphill. The last 2½
miles pour down to Avalon, past eucalyptus, the mighty Pacific in view. Now
I’ve got the mojo to run two-step breath cycles, quads brake-busting in
gravity’s pull. Sweeping past a spent runner now walking, my energy gathers
him up. I hear his footsteps immediately behind through the last mile. His
energy joins mine. He finishes one second after me. The contagion of
transcendence.
For most of us these are not races, they are opportunities. People asking,
”How was your race ? What was your time?” don’t understand, don’t get it.
That’s OK, it’s not a question of right or wrong, better or worse. That too,
misses it.
The ultimate ultrarunning event extends so far past the point of departure
that it has no end. I’m already signed up for that one, just waiting for the
raven’s “quork.”
Returning to “America” on the high speed ferry, I see dolphins easily
matching its 34-knot speed, expressing their joy with full body leaps into
the chill Pacific air. I imagine smiles on their faces, that they may never
come back down.
Mike Bouscaren Jan 21 2006
mbouscaren@msn.com